FireTV app rejections or development issues? Let us (and Amazon) know here!

dgackey

Hey everyone!

Amazon has asked us to let them know if there are recurring issues that people are having with submissions, and we'd like to collate them all into one message rather than a drip feed. If you're experiencing issues with submission approvals, please share it here (with as much specific info as you can).

Known issues we're already on:

• GS games that support the remote are not being approved for the remote (instead being flagged as Controller required)
• Issue with Audio Focus not being captured

Thanks,

Dan

jonmulcahy

for the GS games that support the remote are not being approved for the remote, is this going to be fixed with a new creator or just a server side patch (or maybe just on amazon's side)?

dgackey

@Jon,

We don't know why they're flagging games, actually -- in our tests, including games we have submitted and have been approved, the remote works fine. We're asking them to explain why they don't consider those games compatible with the remote.

jonmulcahy

@dgackey said:
Jon,

We don't know why they're flagging games, actually -- in our tests, including games we have submitted and have been approved, the remote works fine. We're asking them to explain why they don't consider those games compatible with the remote.

any updates on this? I'm almost ready to submit my game, but I want to make sure that it shows up as remote compatible when it launches.

wanegroup

Just got mine approved!

jonmulcahy

@wanegroup said:
Just got mine approved!

Nice!

beefy_clyro

Will a plethora of rejections and show stoppers atm, will the challenge be extended? Seems a bit unfair to start a challenge and then people are rejected beyond their control after spending the time to make it ready

dgackey

@beefy_clyro that's what I was hoping to ascertain with this thread, but nobody's posting issues at the moment, so... I guess nobody's having issues?

freneticz

Can we make a game that works on both Fire TV and mobile/tablet

BlackCloakGS

yes if you are pro

freneticz

I mean one Project with a choice in the beginning what you play on, its that still ok?
Will Amazon and Google approve that?

jonmulcahy

@freneticz said:
I mean one Project with a choice in the beginning what you play on, its that still ok?
Will Amazon and Google approve that?

Google yes, they don't check your app
Amazon prob not, you'll have to support both options at once, I doubt they'd want a choice like that at the beginning. If someone chose the wrong choice they'd get stuck

pokapola

@dgackey said:
beefy_clyro that's what I was hoping to ascertain with this thread, but nobody's posting issues at the moment, so... I guess nobody's having issues?

I just have one of my games accepted by Amazon after numerous times of rejection by them. One issue that I had experienced is that, once in awhile they would say that my game does not cover at least 80% of the screen even though it does cover at least 80% of the screen (I made my game for iPad landscape with Letterbox option chosen when generating the game). It only happened once in awhile, not everytime, I don't know why.

I don't know if anyone else has been experiencing this too, I just want to let you guys know.

jonmulcahy

I just submitted A Long Way Home, I'll post back when any hiccups

BBEnk

@dgackey said:
beefy_clyro that's what I was hoping to ascertain with this thread, but nobody's posting issues at the moment, so... I guess nobody's having issues?

I'm still waiting for my Fire TV to arrive so unable to test and report any issues right now on device it's suppose to ship today, but all seems to work well on mac testing except for creator 13.7 being a bit slow.

KillerPenguinStudios

@BBEnk said:
I'm still waiting for my Fire TV to arrive so unable to test and report any issues right now on device it's suppose to ship today, but all seems to work well on mac testing except for creator 13.7 being a bit slow.

You should have went to BestBuy and bought it. That's what I did yesterday and just ordered the controller off amazon since they didn't have any at a near by store. You can connect other controllers such as a PS 4 controller to the Fire TV so that's what I did for the time being.

BBEnk

I had no idea BestBuy sold them,lol.

imacgs

just Got this from Amazon tv submission:

Observation:- App continues to play audio after the user has exited the
app :
Steps to reproduce:

1. Install and launch the app.

2. Start the game and enter the game play.
   3. During game play, select Home button and exit to home screen.
3. Observe app music keeps on playing even after exiting the app.
   
   Expected Result: App music should stop when user is out of app.

Since this is a known bug, is there a workaround for this ?

Thanks
Pete


jonmulcahy

@imacgs it's not a bug, we have to use the hibernate command for this. You'll want to put a rule in every scene that says

When hibernate is true
Pause music
Otherwise
Play music (resume current music)

jonmulcahy

my app status got changed to Current Version (Pending Action), which from what I see online is some sort of rejection, but i never got an email about it. I've contacted them to see what is up.

I've also posted on their dev forums as it looks like amazon employees check there as well.

KillerPenguinStudios

I made a forum post for this but I'm going to post it here too since it's a development issue I am having.

So, I have spent the last 2 days, about 12 hours total so far trying to get everything working and still no luck. Have someone on the forums trying to help but still nothing. I figured it was time to post something as I have wasted so much time now.

I published my game, connected to my Fire TV via terminal than ran the install. The error I am getting is:

Failure [INSTALL_PARSE_FAILED_NO_CERTIFICATES]

I wasn't sure if I was suppose to use the signed or unsigned but got the same thing with both.

Next I checked my java through terminal. It showed the following:

java version "1.8.0_40"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_40-b25)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.40-b25, mixed mode)

I thought maybe I had to downgrade Java to 1.7 so I deleted the java applet and installed java 1.7. Now I have a small issue with this. When checking which java version I'm running through the terminal it says:

java version "1.8.0_40"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_40-b25)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.40-b25, mixed mode)

But in terminal when checking my java version by:

/Library/Internet\ Plug-Ins/JavaAppletPlugin.plugin/Contents/Home/bin/java -version

I get:

java version "1.7.0_75"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_75-b13)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 24.75-b04, mixed mode)

I am stuck and have wasted so much time on this and not sure where to go from here. I really hope someone can help! Maybe either @dgackey or @BlackCloakGS have come across this before.

Thank you in advance!

imacgs

@jonmulcahy said:
my app status got changed to Current Version (Pending Action), which from what I see online is some sort of rejection, but i never got an email about it. I've contacted them to see what is up.

I've also posted on their dev forums as it looks like amazon employees check there as well.

Hey, I had one of those from about a year ago. I think It means they're waiting for you to do something. complete one of the screens or something like that. In my case it looks like a content rating screen was left un completed. but yes I believe it is a rejection and waiting for you to fix it.

imacgs

@jonmulcahy said:
imacgs it's not a bug, we have to use the hibernate command for this. You'll want to put a rule in every scene that says

When hibernate is true
Pause music
Otherwise
Play music (resume current music)

Thanks I got it all fixed up and re submitted.

imacgs

My game was originally rejected because it did not back out of the options menu when the B button was pressed.

They said:
Expected Result: It must be possible to navigate backwards out of menu
options and decline UI prompts by pressing the B Button

No big deal, it's an easy fix just the first I heard of it.

jonmulcahy

@imacgs said:
My game was originally rejected because it did not back out of the options menu when the B button was pressed.

They said:
Expected Result: It must be possible to navigate backwards out of menu
options and decline UI prompts by pressing the B Button

No big deal, it's an easy fix just the first I heard of it.

i just wish i got some sort of email. i have no idea what, if anything, is wrong!

jonmulcahy

Finally got the reasons behind my rejection:

Issue 1: App graphic/Text is not clear/cannot easily be viewed from a 10 foot view

Steps to reproduce issue:

1. Install and launch the app.
2. Select Play.
3. App displays text on right bottom of the screen which cannot be viewed easily from 10 foot view.

Expected Result: Any in-game text must be clearly be readable from a distance (10 foot view).

Issue 2: State Loss / App restarts from different state

Steps to reproduce issue:

1.Install and launch the app.
2.Select "Play".
3.Play the game up to few levels.
4.Press controller "Menu" button to pause the game.
5.Select "menu" option.
6.Navigate and select "Levels".

Actual Result: For every second time on following the above steps, on selecting "Levels" option, game automatically restarts from 1st level.

Expected Result: On selecting "Level" option, the levels must be displayed. Selecting the level say 2, must take the user to the particular gameplay and it should not restart from 1st. (Log Attached)

Issue 3: Audio Focus: App continues to play audio after the user has exited the app

Steps to reproduce issue:

1. Install and launch the app.
2. Select any level and go through the game.
3. Select Home button and exit to home screen during gameplay.
4. Observe app audio continues to play after exiting from the app.

Issue 4: Microphone

Steps to reproduce:

1. Install and launch the app.
2. Select any level and go through the game.
3. Select Microphone search during gameplay.
4. Observe app audio continues to play during Microphone search. App should lower volume or app audio should stop during Microphone search. App audio should stop when an item is selected while performing Microphone search.

Observation:- Remote: Audio from app continues after selecting item from microphone search :
Observation:- Remote: App fails to lower volume through use of OnAudioFocusChangeListener when performing microphone search

Issue 5: Metadata

App Description displays "Touch Arcade" which does not suit Fire TV.
App description should not mention "tablet" or any similar reference to ""mobile"" unless this reference is within a quote/review of the app. Apps should also exclude "Kindle Tablet Edition" from their title when the app is submitted with intent for Fire TV.

Affected device list: Fire TV, Fire TV Stick

Issue 1: I can kind of see a point, although when I test from 15 feet away I Can read the text fine. Easy solution to make the dialog box 2x as large.

Issue2: This is a strange one, they want me to have the level select page continue from where they are in the actual game. Should be easy to implement, but a strange reason to block the game in my eyes.

issue3: unable to reproduce, audio stops as expected

issue4: unable to reproduce, audio stops as expected

issue5: the touch arcade reference IS within a reviews, so I'm not sure what this is all about.

worst part was, they only gave me this information after I sent them 2 requests!

GSAnimator

Just got rejected by Audio doesn't top, so it can not be resolved by simply use the hibernate function, it must be a bug from GS.

jonmulcahy

@GSAnimator said:
Just got rejected by Audio doesn't top, so it can not be resolved by simply use the hibernate function, it must be a bug from GS.

i got the same rejection, but when i test it on my device it stops as it should. and I confirmed that I have the rule in all scenes.

@BlackCloakGS @dgackey have you heard anything from amazon on this front?

KillerPenguinStudios

Does the hibernate command need to be used for both sounds and music or just music?¿?

jonmulcahy

@KillerPenguinStudios said:
Does the hibernate command need to be used for both sounds and music or just music?¿?

i would think both.
you can also use it to just change volume to 0 which would take care of both.

BlackCloakGS

What audio issue do you need assistance with?